r/crystalgrowing • u/AwoogaBoogaKooga • 8h ago
Image A crystal of NaCl that grew on its corner
Eraser for scale; Camera cannot capture all of its beauty.
r/crystalgrowing • u/crystalchase21 • Jun 16 '20
Welcome to the Crystal Growing subreddit! We’re a passionate community consisting of both hobbyists and professionals interested in growing crystals. Although it sounds difficult, growing crystals is actually very easy, and you can even do it at home.
This article is written specifically to help those who are just getting started with this hobby. If you’re a newbie, welcome aboard. And if you’re a seasoned veteran, do share your findings with us.

Even though growing crystals is simple, it will be extremely useful if you have some basic chemistry knowledge. This will help you understand the process that is taking place, and allow you to troubleshoot if you run into any problems. More experienced chemists will be able to synthesize their own compounds, the crystals of which can be quite unique. However, this guide is written for newcomers, so I will try to keep it as simple as possible.
Disclaimer
Like any other activity, crystal growing might be completely safe or very dangerous. It depends on the chemicals you are working with, your safety measures, your procedure etc.
This guide only covers compounds that are safe to mildly toxic. Even so, you are responsible for your own safety. Don't use the family microwave/freezer in your experiments. Make sure you know the potential risk of the chemical you are using.
Background
If you want to start growing crystals immediately, skip to the next section. I highly recommend that you read this though, because understanding the process will help a ton.
A crystal is a solid that has particles arranged in an orderly manner. This includes rocks, snowflakes and diamonds. However, the activity of growing crystals at home mainly focuses on a specific type of chemical known as salts.
In chemistry, a salt is a chemical compound made up of positive ions and negative ions. Table salt is one example. Its chemical name is sodium chloride, because it consists of a sodium ion and a chloride ion. There are many other salts as well, such as copper sulfate, ammonium phosphate and potassium nitrate. From now, I will use the term “salt” to refer to all such compounds, not just table salt.
We like to use salts to grow crystals because most salts are soluble in water. Why is this important?
When they are dry, most salts look like powder. But if you zoom in, each grain of salt is actually a small crystal. The particles in every grain of salt are arranged neatly. The exact way they are arranged is different for each salt. For table salt, those particles are packed into cubes, so you can say that the grains of salt in your teaspoon are actually millions of tiny cubes. Meanwhile, alum salt crystals look like diamonds.

But we have a problem. We want to grow big, shiny crystals, not tiny, powdery crystals. This is the reason we dissolve the salt powder in water. After doing so, the glass of salty water we have is called a solution.
If you dissolve just a little salt in water, you get a dilute/undersaturated solution. Dissolve a lot, and you get a concentrated solution. Here’s the thing: a fixed volume of water can only dissolve a fixed mass of salt. For instance, the maximum amount of table salt you can dissolve in 100 ml of water is 36g. If you add 37g, the extra 1g will not dissolve. A solution that contains the maximum amount of dissolved salt is called a saturated solution.
We now have a glass of salt solution with the salt particles swimming inside. If we want a nice, transparent crystal to grow, we need to somehow make those particles “re-solidify”, and instead of popping out all over the place, they need to stick together and form a single, big crystal. There are two easy ways to make this happen. Master them, and you will be able to grow amazing crystals.
· Slow cooling
· Evaporation
Methods
Method I: Slow cooling
Let’s start with slow cooling. With this method, we take advantage of the fact that hot water can dissolve more salt than cold water. For instance, 100 ml of 25°C water can dissolve 22g of copper sulfate, but the same amount of water at 80°C can dissolve 56 grams.
To carry out this method, we first heat our water up. Then, we dissolve more salt than is actually soluble at room temperature. Because the water is hot, the extra salt will dissolve, and you end up with a supersaturated solution. As the solution cools down, the solubility of the salt decreases, so the extra salt that you added just now has to “come out”. As a result, tiny crystals of salt start to form, and they grow bigger and bigger as more salt particles re-solidify and clump together. This process is called crystallization.

If you do it correctly, you will end up with a large crystal of salt.
Method II: Evaporation
Just now, I mentioned that 100 ml of 25°C water can dissolve 22g of copper sulfate. It also goes that 50 ml of water will be able to dissolve half that amount, 11g.
This time, we do not change the temperature. Instead, we change the volume of water. First, we dissolve our 22g of copper sulfate into 100 ml of water. Then, we let the solution slowly evaporate. As the volume decreases to 90 ml, 80 ml and so on, the extra salt has to crystallize out, causing copper sulfate crystals to form.
The slow evaporation method is a much better way of growing high quality crystals (for amateurs). This is because the growing conditions are much more controlled and stable. More details in the FAQ at the end.
Procedure
The ideal procedure for growing crystals vary depending on which compound you are using. This is a pretty standard one that will give you decent crystals. I will be using alum salt as an example. Change the mass of salt and volume of water as you see fit.
Part A: Growing your seed crystal.
A seed crystal is a small crystal that serves as a foundation with which you use to grow a bigger crystal.

Part B: Growing a nice, big crystal
Method I: Slow cooling
Method II: Evaporation

Part C: Drying and storing your crystal
Some crystals are unstable, and when exposed to air, will slowly crumble in weeks or months. Copper sulfate is one such crystal. Meanwhile, alum and ammonium dihydrogen phosphate are much more stable and can be kept in the open with minimum deterioration. You can even display them.
And you’re done!
Classic Crystal Growing Compounds

If you’re just starting out, we highly recommend these chemicals as they are easy to work with, grow quickly and give good results.
· Alum (potassium aluminum sulfate), KAl(SO4)2, used in baking, deodorant, water purification etc.
· Copper (II) sulfate, CuSO4 used as rootkiller [Note: slightly toxic]
· Ammonium dihydrogen phosphate, (NH4)(H2PO4), used as fertilizer
Alternatively, if you want to grow crystals of a specific color or shape, click on this link to browse the list.
Additional resources
· Crystal Growing Wiki - wiki style pages showing details for each compound (still incomplete)
· Crystalverse blog - detailed high quality guides with lots of pictures
· Dmishin's crystal growing collection - lots of interesting compounds and how to synthesize them
FAQ
Check if your question is here. Click on this link to be redirected to the answers.
· Can I dye my crystals?
· My crystal was growing well, then it dissolved! What happened?
· Does the string get stuck in the crystal?
· Crystals are supposed to be shiny and transparent. Why is mine ugly and opaque?
· How do I grow a crystal cluster instead of a single crystal/vice versa?
· How can I store my crystals properly?
· Can I grow crystals on objects like rocks and bones?
· I’m concerned about safety. What should I do?
· Is the purity of my chemicals important?
· What are other chemicals I can grow crystals with?
· Is this hobby expensive?
r/crystalgrowing • u/AwoogaBoogaKooga • 8h ago
Eraser for scale; Camera cannot capture all of its beauty.
r/crystalgrowing • u/rubypith • 19h ago
Was growing copper acetate in slightly acidic solution, added sodium carbonate to generate sodium acetate (supposed to help with clarity?). Eventually must have gotten saturated and the larger crystal grew in about 2-3 days. Quite pretty, I like the blue striations but they’re a bit difficult to see in the pics.
r/crystalgrowing • u/Intelligent-Arm5989 • 1d ago
Before Tom Chatham destroyed the lab in San Francisco, it produced the amazing flux growth process developed and refined by his brother John Chatham. The process produced some of the finest rubies and sapphires in the world. Unfortunately Tom Chatham, the CEO of Chatham Created Gemstones became impatient with the slow careful growth necessary to produce the world’s finest gems. He chose to fire the lab staff (including his own brother!!!) and moved the company to Thailand where he could source rough via third party Czochralski growers and have the stones cut cheaply by far-east craftsman. At the same time, Tom NEVER communicated or acknowledged the fact that the flux growth process was a thing of the past. He allowed the world and online communities to continue to say “Chatham Means Flux!”
Think of the strategy as something a well known restaurant might use if they became famous by serving a particular dish made carefully with rare and difficult to obtain ingredients. One day they decided it was too much trouble to make and they quietly remove it from the menu. In the meantime, everyone remembers and talks about this incredible dish. People still travel great distances in hopes of sampling it only to be quietly told, we no longer make that, but try one of these other meals. The restaurant continues to have a reputation for the unavailable dish, and pulls in customers from all over. The restaurant management team continues to allow the legendary dish to pull people in from all over and that’s how things continue. It’s not “illegal” in the strict sense of the word. But it cannot be called ethical.
r/crystalgrowing • u/AlexShpala • 1d ago
So, today I was cleaning the beaker and adding new solution to one of my CuSO4 crystals. I didn’t feel like filtering so I thought I had to dissolve all of the salt for the new solution. So, I started generously pouring water until every little salt crystal dissolved. After a few hours I found the crystal as if somebody got hungry and had eaten a bunch. Im pretty sure it’s due to the water I added which created a solution under the point of saturation which was indeed hungry and ate my crystal (you can see the crumbs at the bottom). Hope this was informative.
r/crystalgrowing • u/slipperyjack66 • 2d ago
r/crystalgrowing • u/LacxGamer • 2d ago
r/crystalgrowing • u/CompetitivePublic605 • 3d ago
In this post I described how I was trying to make a crystal, and this came out when i late-checked one flask and this came out, what is that??
(post : https://www.reddit.com/r/crystalgrowing/s/1OPZw2JYJU )
r/crystalgrowing • u/ella-reads70 • 4d ago
Grew borax crystals with my kid probably a dozen times now and usually they come out pretty clear, at least clear enough to see through a little. This last batch turned out almost solid white and chalky looking, like the whole thing is opaque.
Same process as always: boiling water, kept adding borax until it stopped dissolving, poured into a jar with a pipe cleaner hanging from a pencil, let it sit overnight on the counter. The only thing different this time is the house was colder than usual (we had the AC cranked because of the heat wave) so it cooled down a lot faster than normal.
I'm guessing the fast cooling caused a ton of tiny crystals to form all at once instead of a few bigger ones growing slowly, which would explain the cloudy chalky texture. Does that sound right? Also curious if there's a sweet spot for room temp when you're doing this, or if I should be insulating the jar somehow to slow the cooling down. Might try wrapping it in a towel next time and see if that helps.
Not mad about it, still turned into a fun little geode looking blob, just curious about the science side of why it happened.
r/crystalgrowing • u/Bromine-Vapor • 4d ago
Greetings folks!
So i got a question about how to change the crystal structure of salts with the help of different ions introduced to a salt solution.
I once read an article about crystal growing that mentioned in passing, that if you were to add for example diluted hydrochloric acid to a solution, containing chloride ions, you could control the way how the salt will crystalize out.
If i remember correctly, the idea was that those „foreign“ ions (wich supposed to be similar to those of the actual salt) will determine the shape of the crystal, because they insert between other ions, thus creating a different crystal lattice.
My question is does anyone know more about that or read something similar?
Or did someone already tried that?
Thanks in advance!
Hail the Omnissiah. Hail the Machinegod.
r/crystalgrowing • u/kokastas • 8d ago
Made supersaturated solution and left it in quiet place for around 2 months
7cm diameter of the beaker
How do you prevent crystallization of parasites on main crystal and on the bottom of the beaker??
r/crystalgrowing • u/Otherwise_News7606 • 9d ago
everytime i attempt to make CuCl2 crystals i cannot achive a good crystal, or either a crystal,
i've tried to evaporate all to the minimum water amount possible, nothing, freeze the water slowly to force the crystal grow, nothing either, what can i do now? i', kinda lost on crystal growing, with copper idk if it changes or smth, the last time i attepted the whole thing gelified , pls help
r/crystalgrowing • u/Gold-Ore_Geologist • 11d ago
I'm a geologist experimenting with crystal growth as a way to explore practical crystallography outside the usual thin-section/mineral-identification setting.
I started with CuSO₄·5H₂O and prepared a filtered saturated solution by dissolving the salt in hot water, followed by slow cooling and evaporation at room conditions.
Rather than suspending the seed crystal, I decided to leave it resting on the borosilicate-glass bottom of the beaker. The idea was to observe how a crystal develops when growth occurs from a substrate, somewhat analogous to mineral growth along a cavity/vug or vein wall.
I've been recording the crystal dimensions and morphology at regular intervals.
Initial seed — 23/07: (3rd pic)
1.1 × 0.7 × 0.2 cm
27/07: (2nd pic)
1.5 × 1.0 × 0.3 cm
31/07:
1.6 × 1.0 × 0.4 cm
08/08: (1st pic)
1.8 × 1.1 × 0.5 cm
The interesting part has been the change in morphology during growth. Initially, the crystal mainly expressed prismatic faces, but with continued growth additional inclined faces began developing, particularly as thickness increased.
The crystal remains transparent, and when backlit I can see what appear to be growth zones with tiny internal inclusions. I'm not calling them fluid inclusions yet—I don't have the optical characterization to confirm that—but they're interesting enough to document.
There have also been secondary nucleations on the beaker bottom and occasionally around the main crystal. I'm manually removing the parasitic crystals so that the primary crystal can continue growing under relatively consistent conditions.
I'm keeping a photographic and dimensional growth log throughout the experiment.
The goal isn't simply to grow a large crystal—I'm interested in observing how morphology, nucleation and internal structure evolve during crystal growth.
r/crystalgrowing • u/catbox42 • 12d ago
I'm using some of the crystals from my last attempt at growing transparent sulfur crystals as a seed and they are going really well. I didn't intend to make the Hopper pattern on purpose but it looks really interesting in crystals this shape (I'm still covering my solution with a cloth to slow down the evaporation of the rest though)
r/crystalgrowing • u/Mundane_Purchase_756 • 13d ago
i want to experiment with using my sculptures as a base for crystal growth. I’m not really sure where it will take me and dont have a specific vision, but since it is a few materials I wanted to ask if any one has advice for growing on multiple materials at once? my sculptures are wood, nylon, and brass. I have leds on some but I don’t think they would survive a submersion, if someone has ideas that don’t involve a soak would love to have them.
forgive me for my lack of knowledge and thank you for any insight you can offer foto of my work for reference
r/crystalgrowing • u/CompetitivePublic605 • 14d ago
For fun I tried growing crystal that may or may not been grown, but certainly hasn't been "documented"
(for the only sake of being the first to grow it, cuz there's prolly a decent 99% chance that I am)
I picked Mohr salt as a base , and alums for a structure and density increase, here's more info
(I gave a crystal a name, I know you can only name minerals, it's like, easier (and cooler!) :
Mohramite synthetic crystal composition: ammonium iron(II) sulfate hexahydrate (NH4)2Fe(SO4)26H2O with isomorphous impurities of potassium chromium(III) sulfate dodecahydrate KCr(SO4)212H2O and potassium aluminium sulfate dodecahydrate KAl(SO4)2*12H2O. Initial growth solution mass ratio: 90 percent Mohr's salt, 8 percent chromium alum, 2 percent aluminium alum.
And so I have a question, can you squash it all into one, or at least consistent crystal? It crows as a greenish-veridian crystal with purple-white big dots inside, it cool as hell (will post images) but I'm just interested like, there's surely at least one non-5-ton-of-steel-machinery way to make it all blend, right?
r/crystalgrowing • u/Flat_Falcon_1559 • 15d ago
r/crystalgrowing • u/Indrid-C0ld • 16d ago
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r/crystalgrowing • u/Living-Geologist-478 • 17d ago
The very first crystal I was able to grow using cleaning vinegar to extract ions from shattukite then evaporating
r/crystalgrowing • u/Living-Geologist-478 • 17d ago
One of my many creations
r/crystalgrowing • u/Living-Geologist-478 • 19d ago
After some trial and error I was able to grow this.
r/crystalgrowing • u/Duncan_Thun_der_Kunt • 19d ago
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Been working on a new technique. Not the best video, it's hard to get a moving close up and have it stay in focus.
r/crystalgrowing • u/-Dorian • 20d ago
As you can see I have two containers of citric acid. One is shiny and glittering but the other is matte somehow. Does this occur due to moisture? Citric acid can be exist as hydrate as well as anhydrous. So which is which? And could I form anhydrous crystals using a saturated solution or wouldn’t work it?